The ongoing story of renovating our (and sometimes other's) 1920's house in Holyoke, MA.

If you haven’t got problems I feel bad for you son…*

published on August 18, 2011 by kati

*Lyrics from Jay-Z’s 99 Problems as resung by Hugo on his album Old Tyme Religion. I may even prefer the Hugo version, though the video is absolutely stupid. The sentiment remains the same. And it ain’t a bitch.

Client kitchen renovation – days 11 & 12

The week started out great. Tile. Flooring. Wall color. Mostly all hits (as I said in my last post, there’s a shade of yellow that’s under investigation). And we even made an ambitious and detailed schedule for all of our sub contractors so we could confirm finish dates and get a game plan for the end date. That’s when we hit our first significant snag. Ugh. The countertop installers have us at the back of the line, the bottom of the list, and aren’t able to complete our project within our overall timeframe. Blerg.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the kitchen isn’t going to happen, or even that the other subs can’t work around most of the delay – they can, and will, do what they have to do to finish when they were supposed to. It just means that Mr & Mrs K will be without a completed kitchen for longer than any of us (especially them) had hoped and planned for. These things are inevitable, in some ways, but equally annoying, and upsetting in other ways. All in all the Ks have handled the news well. They have a small child, and being kitchen-less for longer than the 4 weeks we’d hoped for is hard enough, let alone adding an unknown number of days to that timeframe. We’re just going to keep moving along at a strong and steady pace, perhaps not sprinting across the finish line as we’d hoped, but making a respectable time worthy of placing (get the running lingo?).

So, for now, the focus remains the same: complete the flooring and painted surfaces to make way for the cabinetry and appliances. The bulk of the carpentry work will be done next week, with (hopefully) the electrician and plumbers following up shortly thereafter. After that, well, it’s a waiting game for the countertop dealer. The Ks will have most of a kitchen and bathroom by the end of August, which is great news (and super speedy fast work for the Teams). We’ll just have to try to remain glass-half-full-y about it, and cross our fingers for a sprinty fast time after all.